The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Stargazing Poop Bugs, Ancient Beer Ladies, Secret Internet Slang

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Christie Taylor joins the show to talk about dung beetles who love to stargaze. Plus, Laura explains how early beer brewers were women, and Rachel gets into weird internet language on TikTok and beyond. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman Link to Jess' Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Produced by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ Thanks to our Sponsors! Get 20% OFF @honeylove by going to https://honeylove.com/WEIRDEST! #honeylovepod Right now, get 55% off at https://Babbel.com/WEIRDEST This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at https://BetterHelp.com/WEIRDEST Head to https://FACTORMEALS.com/weirdest50 and use code weirdest50 to get 50% off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis dummies and a lot more, and you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code Weirdest. It's third party lab tested and ships directly to you in a discreet box. Best of all, everything's backed by Mood's 100-day satisfaction guarantee, and like I said, you can get 20% off with code Weirdest. So if you're looking to try us a new cannabis products, head on over to mood.com. Get 20% off your first order now with code Weirdest. That's code Weirdest for 20% off. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're

built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our art. We also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of popular science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Laura Bicis.

And I'm Christy Taylor. Christy, welcome to the show. Hi, it's so good to be here. Yeah. Do you need me to say more? Well, I would love for you to tell listeners a little bit just about who you are and and what you do. I know you from both your previous work at Science Friday and also doing roller derby back in the day. So why don't you tell listeners some other cool things? Well, I have to say actually

bringing up roller derby, I was thinking a lot about the fact that we both tried to make Carl Sagan into a derby name. You actually went with it. It was just on my wish list. But like you're Carl Sagan. I at one point opined about snarls again as a derby name. Yeah. It's just sort of one really hard to yell across the track. It's a hard one to yell. I definitely, you know, so many people have derby names with sleigh in them and they want the short end version to be Slay.

And I really had to be like, no, no, no, I'm Carl. Please call me Carl. Wait, was this like in, oh my God, what is the zombie show? Oh my God The Walking Dead Sorry, all the ways The Dad yells his kid's name Carl

Yeah also like As told by Ginger Carl My sister and I still quote that show Way more than anybody They used to Lorraine Newman from S&L Voice of Lois Foutley

Amazing Emmy worthy performance Nickelodeon But yeah Christy What are you up to these days? Well, I quit roller derby. I left Science Friday, so I'm but a hollow shell of the person you once knew. But I'm still doing science journalism just in different places. So I kind of went freelance at the end of last year.

Sorry, no, that was a whole year ago. Beginning of last year, 2023, I do work on the podcast for New Scientist magazine. I'm like the co-host slash scriptwriter slash editor. at times. It's a very fun, like, one woman show. Not one woman show, it takes a team, but like I feel like I'm the podcast person who pulls all these other elements together.

I'm also supporting some other cool projects from backstage. I've gotten back into writing a little bit. It's been a pastiche of a year. I'm a big fan of pastiche years post- leaving full-time media work.

So, yeah, thanks much. All the layoffs have made it feel like a safer place to be honestly in some ways, but we don't have to talk about sad things or scary things right now. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm really excited to chat about some weird stuff with you. Before we get into it, I have like a couple of sort of like listener notes. For starters, I want to say thanks to Jim Addy for your lovely note. And I want to say hello to Chloe and Clara who listened to the show with their dad, Jim. As listeners, know from how much we talk about Liam, our Australian listener, who's not like a teenager,

but what started listening to our show as a very small child, hi Liam, I hope you're not too cool for us yet. I know the day will come, but then you'll circle back and you'll like us again one day later. But anyway, I love hearing that families listen to the show together. I know that not every episode is appropriate for every child, so I appreciate the the parents who scream to make sure that they can share us with their young ones. And Chloe and Clara, I hope that you enjoy listening to some weird science stuff from us. And I will get to your dad's question eventually. I'm not going to spoil it, but he did send in a request.

And I will add it to my list. Relatedly, listeners, you know, we are gearing up to do. a Q&A, Jess and I have been talking about it. We're probably going to be over on her Twitch. So make sure you follow me on Patreon or follow Jess on Twitch. You can find all of that info in the show notes. It's the best way to keep track of what's going on with us, both related to weirdest thing and also all the other cool stuff we do.

And yeah. And one other thing, which is just sort of like it occurs to me that I don't, I haven't like made this request in a long time. So I need to slash love finding guest host. for this show. And it's also a great way for us to sort of get the show in front of new people. Like, you know, every time we bring on a guest host who has sort of their own people who listen to shows that they make or their own group of friends, people that they shout out at the subway, I don't know, whatever they do. That is like a new group of people that potentially can learn about

weirdest thing. Anyway, the marketing budget for this show is zero. The marketing tactics have always kind of boiled down to me listening to the show on the subway and holding my phone so people can see the screen while I go like, huh, wow, ha, ho. So that being said, if you are a public figure who listens to this show, you should email me. You should come be on the show, relatedly. If you're a person who is friends with, like, I don't know, I'm going to just name a random list. Anyone who's on Dimension 20, either or of the Green Brothers. I don't know.

Who else? Chris Evans said he was into science once. Who knows Chris Evans? If you know these people or other people. Taylor Swift, can you date Taylor Swift? Oh my God. Yeah. Or I would say Travis or Taylor.

We'd be thrilled to have them. I'd be thrilled to have anyone who could tweet this show to people who might like it. So yeah. Truly, listen, if you can get Bremen. and Lee Mulligan on this show for me. I'll give you anything you want for me before I spontaneously combust an excitement. So anyway, that's my pitch. Also, if you're a listener who does science or history, you know, either like academically or as a communicator, and you have some like podcast experience or sort of related talking while being recorded

experience, I would love to hear from you as a potential host. You know, I hear sometimes from listeners who don't have that experience and I would love to literally chat with every fan of the show on this show, but it is a bit of work and kind of nerve-wracking to talk into a mic and do stuff that we're going to fact-check and, you know, then be on the air. So I would ask that it's, you know, something you've done before. But if you have, if that describes you, I would freaking love to have you on this show. Please email me post-haste at rachel at popsyd.com or hi at rachel fultman.com. Okay, that's my pitch. Now no one can say that I haven't tried to get the Intrepid Heroes from Dimension 20 on this show. And I'm manifesting it for 2024. It's happening.

Excellent use of the word post-taste. I remember the phrase post-a-huh. I haven't heard that one in a minute and that was good. Thanks. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, et cetera, and decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was in a non-competitive, fun, easy-going, laid-back way. Laura, what's your tease? So bananas might be the secret to a better beer. I want to know this now.

Oh, man, that's the idea. Wonderful. Okay. Christy, what's your tease? Okay, so we are all made of stardust. This is known. But what if the stars and our poop were even more closely related than that Carl Sagan poetic version? Okay.

Okay. You've got me intrigued. I want to talk about something that I has been like sort of a favorite pet topic of mine for a long time, which is how. A mysterious animal called the grass mud horse can teach us about censorship on the internet. So, Laura, why don't we start with you? Because Chris, you want to know about bananas and beer right now. If I eat a banana, will I feel like I'm drinking beer? Maybe.

No, I was always the loser in school who was like hand shut up first to go first anyway. So I kind of love starting it off. So I'm happy, happy to do today. So while beer is one of the oldest drinks in history, some of the earliest recordings of it come back, or date back to about 6,000 BCE, its flavor and ingredients have obviously changed as brewing methods and ingredient availability have changed right along with it. The large scale, industrial-sized brewing that we're a little bit more familiar with today kind of took off in the 1970s.

And while, yes, you could see more beers in store and more was being made in larger quantities, it started to lose its flavor comparatively. It had historically been brewed using these, like, more open horizontal vats. And then the industry switched over to those, like, larger closed vessels that you've seen on, you know, any brewery tour you've ever taken anywhere. And that switch occurred, of course, because these containers were easier. to fill. They were easier to empty and clean and maintain, and they made larger quantities to save on cost. But yeah, these same modern methods then reduce the flavor in the process. And this is where the bananas enter the chat. I'm just kind of picturing like when I like, you know, use a banana as a

phone to like impress my younger nieces and nephews. And that's kind of what's happening right now. Not that I do that all the time. So in a study, from 2022 in the journal Applied Environmental Microbiology, a team of microbiologists in Belgium reported that they can improve contemporary beer's flavor by genetically engineering a specific type of yeast. Now, why banana? It's because they focused on a gene for a banana-like flavor, and this is a direct quote, because it is one of the most important flavors present in beer,

as well as other alcoholic drinks. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Which beers are we talking about? Like, is this IPAs or are we talking like porters? Because I believe. Yeah. This was a lager. Yeah. Yeah. I have full disclosure, I have not tasted this beer. This has been done within the confines of this one lab and one study. And obviously taste is subjective. So definitely take some of the this with a, you know, a grain of margarita salt, if you will. Yeah. So, you know, again, taste is very subjective. Like, you know, some people prefer, like, I don't want to say I'm more watery because I don't want to put down anybody's taste, but you know, like a watery, like Corona. I love a watery beer. I, in the right context, it's, you know, sometimes it's about hydration with just a smack of beer. Yeah, exactly. Right. They get, yeah, the water, your watery beers again, they get that bad rap. They get, you know, you get called basic if you like certain things. But, you know, so taste is, again, very subjective. You know, where we could sit here.

all day and debate what the best kind of beer is. So basically the reason why the flavor gets tamped down during this process is that during fermentation, the yeast converts 50% of the sugar in the mash to ethanol and the other half is into carbon dioxide. That CO2 eventually pressurizes dampening the flavor. So the team used a technique in a lab to pinpoint the genes that are responsible for the flavor in the beer. They did this while also. also screening large numbers of yeast strains to find ones the ones that would work best under the pressure of fermentation. There are about 1,500 known species of yeast. So they had to go through, and that's, again, that's only the ones that we know and we know that yeast is kind of funky and I'm sure there are plenty

more that we have not tapped into. So while looking for these strains, they identified a single mutation in the MDS3 gene, which is a source of that banana lake flavor that can also stand up to the pressure of fermentation. They used our favorite gene editing technique, aka CRISPR, to edit the gene and add it to the beer, which helped the yeast better tolerate the carbon dioxide pressure and it enriched the beer's flavor. So using this gene within the brewing process could yield a more robust flavor. As we said, this beer isn't ready for prime. time you had so don't be looking for bananas on labels. But what I loved about this weird little fact was it was just that why it was just so indicative of the winding history that the brewing of

beer has had. I mean, pumpkin beer goes all the way back to colonial times, like long before the term basic arrived. It was a cheap way for farmers to flavor their ales. And then especially with the rise of craft brewing over the last few decades. There have definitely been some pretty weird things that we've put into beer. According to Food and Wine magazine, 40-foot brewery in London, used yeast from controversial author Ruled Doll's chair to make a beer called odious ale. Amazing. Wait, which region of the chair? Like, which region of the chair? Like, you know, is it? It did not. Like, is it where he farted into the chair. I'm going to assume yes, but I can't be sure. I know it was this specialized chair that was designed. He was injured in World War II, and it was the specialized chair that was designed

to help him write better. Another crazy one was we have some readers that love hot pepper stories. Twisted Pine Brewing Company created a ghost face killer ale that includes the ghost pepper. And one that this one I've actually tried, the Porterhouse Brewing Company in New York has used raw oysters in their popular Irish oyster stout. I'm not a beer connoisseur, but I loved this one. It was at Francis Tavern in the financial district. Shout out to them. They're one of my favorite restaurants in this. I would try that beer. I was just there really recently, actually. Did not get it. Is it salty? Is it, you know, like, what is it? Sweet and salty. Yeah. I kind of had that, like, and I'm not really a big shellfish or oyster fan to begin with, but it just had enough of that,

like, salty flavor that I was like, ooh, I'm in the ocean. You know, I'm in the ocean. You know, I'm I'm at the beach, but I'm an oyster enthusiast, so I'll pretty much, you know, try anything that has some sort of funky oyster connection. So that one I can definitely speak for, unlike the banana or rote doll chair beer. What I also liked about this was diving deeper into beers. History, women have always had a deep tie into history, just not as recently. their involvement, it's a huge far cry from the male-dominated bearded hipster image or the sexist beer commercials of Super Bowl's past that are kind of synonymous with the industry today. Women have long had a huge involvement in the making of beer, both on an economic but then also scientific level. According to Teresa McCullough, who's a curator of the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian,

women absolutely have in all societies throughout world history been primarily responsible for brewing beer, which I kind of love. One of the earliest known examples of this tie with brewing is with an ancient Mesopotamian hymn. It is to a Samarian goddess called Ninkasi. She was the Samarian goddess of brewing, and this hymn dates back as early as 1800 BCE. It praises her and includes a nice little recipe. for making beer from barley bread and discusses other brewing techniques. Have researchers tried to make that beer then? Have not found that yet, but I'm sure somebody.

I mean, I'm sure some awesome craft brewery somewhere has tried to make that. I know there is a beer, I think it's made in Oregon with the name, or a beer or a brewery with the name Nkasi, which I think is kind of awesome. Ancient Mesopotamia, where this was taken was a heavily patriarchal society, but beer brewing was one of the only opportunities that women had to earn a living. They were responsible, yeah, they were responsible for brewing it, and they were the only ones at the time, I believe, allowed to open their own taverns. Beer laws are even mentioned in the code of Hamarabi,

which is that set of, it's a set of, I think, almost 300 laws where, and it's where we get the legal idea of innocent until proven guilty. And it gave the jurisdiction over brewing and beer to women, And we know this because the word she is used to describe every tavern owner. So that's how, I mean, so basically women should be women brewing beer is as old as an idea as innocent until proven guilty, which is like you don't really get older than that in humanity. So this tradition continued through up through ancient Egypt, up into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe. And women were primarily the ones who brewed beer at home since it was a practical and calorie rich beverage. before clean drinking water, beer was one of the safest ways to stay hydrated.

Sure, yeah. As Rachel alluded to, and like, we're not talking, you know, people were not bud light. No. People weren't drinking, you know, like an IPA with, you know, 7 to 11 percent alcohol. This was more like maybe half a percent to 2.8. This was just a, and, you know, a way to maybe not get cholera, which sounds pretty awesome. And for the working class, it was obviously an important source of nutrients. We obviously know it's full of carbohydrates, but it also does have some protein.

And because it was such a common part of the average person's diet, fermenting was many, one of the many normal household tasks for women. And as with anything involving women during the Middle Ages, religion kind of enters the chat here. There is this persistent myth that some of our witchcraft imagery, like pointy hats and black cats and cauldron, comes directly from brewing. And while that's not entirely true, it was more economics and tougher gender norms that pushed them out of brewing,

there's some kind of weird little links. It's kind of a correlation, not causation kind of thing. But we do know of at least one woman who was executed for witchcraft who had beer mentioned in her trial. Wow. I know. This took a turn. According to a historian and archaeologist,

Christina Wade, and Peter's daughter was burnt alive in 1590 in Bergen, Norway. She was the wife at the time of a very famous Lutheran minister, and the charges brought against her were part of a larger trend where rival clerics would try to attack other ministers through their wives. Now, she stood trial twice, which was a rarity in her husband's connection. Her husband's connections helped her escape the first trial, kind of similar to how Johannes Kepler helped keep his mother alive during her own witch trial in 1615.

But when he died in 1590, he could no longer protect her. Case was reopened and she was found guilty. One of the very interesting charges brought against her was that she cursed a man with an illness because he refused to give her beer. I mean, come on. Not to glorify drinking too heavily, but wouldn't you? Wouldn't you? I mean, come on. Good for her. Seems like, good for him.

We indoors. And yes, this connection between witchcraft and brewing is one that hasn't been totally explored. But in Anne's case, one of her supposed magical spells was just this backlash. And there might be a link between the very women who brewed beer and these accusations themselves elsewhere, including in England. A poem of all things, you know, the talk about the power of the pen was actually. part of the death now for a group of women that were called the ale wives. They were brewers. An influential poet and priest named John Skelton wrote a poem called The Tunning of Eleanor Rumying. It's in Middle English, so I may have butchered the pronunciation of the last name. I'm not a

middle English scholar. And in this poem, the ale wives were depicted as kind of having an association with brewing potions, being sexually deviant, maybe kin to the devil. So like, which is, but it's not going as far as saying, these are witches, burn them at the stake. And she, her, Eleanor herself in the poem, is depicted as a shrewd businesswoman, kind of like Anne, who easily could have been peddling, like, anti-aging skincare on TikTok,

or maybe been the inspiration for Winifred Sanderson and Hocus Pocus. Because here is a little bit of an excerpt from this poem about this fictional ale life. When I began to brew, and I have found it to be true, drink now while it is new and ye may it brook it shall make you look younger than ye be two years or three for ye may prove it by me she's basically telling people her beer can you know take those you know

take those fine lines off of their faces the poem doesn't go as far as to accuse any alewives of witchcraft directly but it did help in slandering them and getting them pushed out of the beer brewing business It's not entirely clear how much witchcraft did do this, but what is clear is the language that was used to describe witches, poor women, and ill lives. All was kind of similar. And there's some evidence, written evidence of deliberate proof of men trying to get women out of the brewing business. And this, of course, brought me back to bananas because it got me thinking what amazing and unusual flavorings could have been added to beer with the help of the ale wives. Like, would bananas be in every beer? Would it make Bud Light taste better? Would it make, you know, again, considering there are that at least 1,500 known species of yeast, what other concoctions could have been made and what better beers could have been brewed if there were more brewers? And we hadn't, you know, kicked. women out of the industry almost entirely. So there you have it. Specific genes and a specific

strain of yeast found in bananas can help make better brear and women should brew it. That just makes me think of like the ways in which like I think the original, the original logger like involved wild yeast from the air basically. Not from the air, but basically whatever happened to be around got you this beer. And so there's also this like thing where, if you brew beer in different locations, like it's going to have different flavors. Totally. Also, there were just, I feel like, you know, there were so many industries and crafts where when something was associated with domestic life and sort of just like the chore of

keeping people alive and keeping the house from falling down, it was women's work. And then we see this transition of once it becomes like a commercialized enterprise being like, no that's not for ladies exactly you know we saw to have something as old as ancient mesopotamia be linked to women then all of a sudden nope taken away because of you know stricter gender norms of the protestant reformation it's kind of it's you know you know makes you want to roll your eyes a little bit yeah and also think about like the the sort of like generational knowledge that was lost by um these existing uh makers being like supplanted by, because it was not like an amicable handover, you know. It was not like,

oh, yeah, and then they did it together. And as time went on, it became more and more male dominated. I mean, we see the same thing with like, you know, midwifery being taken over by the medicalization of gynecology and obstetrics, which I've talked about a weird thing before. And yeah, like, of course, now there are way more midwives and doulas than there were a couple decades ago, which is awesome. But you also wonder, like, what if we had had like an unbroken medical legacy of all of that knowledge? An unbroken knowledge chain or something like that, like an unbroken historical knowledge chain would be awesome. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, in that way we can learn a lot from, you know, indigenous practitioners who have managed to keep up their own knowledge chains. It would just be really cool if history had not been like, you know, this thing that you've spent generations learning to do. Actually, we're going to take it and make money off of it and do it worse. And not to laugh because it sucks, but yeah. Yeah.

I feel like that's, yeah, we're going to bring it back. It's also like, to what degree is bringing it back actually being, actually benefiting the people who originally had that knowledge in the first place? I think about like how a lot of like going back to midwifery, a lot of that was also black women in black communities taking care of black women. And, you know, is that is the resurgence of midwifery and doula is actually benefiting those communities in the same way at this point in this political economy? Yeah, such an important point. Well, on that very cheery note, listen, it's weirdest thing. You know what you're getting into. We laugh, we cry.

It's true. We're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with some more facts. Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis dummies and a lot more, and you can get 20% off your first order at mood. with promo code weirdest. I'm not a smoker myself, but I do love the occasional weed gummy to you know, help me go off to Dreamland. And I can't have one right now because I have a new kit. And, you know, I definitely miss it a little bit. But maybe you can have a weed gummy. And you can get

one at mood.com. So the reason that different cannabis strains can make you feel different ways isn't just about the THC. It seems like it's also based on other components called terpenes. Turpines influence how a product tastes and smells. And it seems like they can also impact the way you feel. Mood partnered with dozens of small American farms to custom cultivate flour with specific terpen profiles designed for specific moods. So you can choose your cannabis gummy, edible, flour, or pre-roll based on how you want to feel. Just go to mood.com and click shop by mood. And yes, it is now 100% federally legal to have really great bud shipped right to your door. It's third party lab tested and ships directly to you in a discreet box.

Best of all, everything's backed by Mood's 100-day satisfaction guarantee and, Like I said, you can get 20% off with code Weirdest. I'm eyeing mood.com's delta 9 THC buttercream caramels because in addition to not being able to have THC, I also can't have dairy right now. So the idea of having a caramel that also me mellows me out and sends you to Dreamland sounds very nice. And speaking of fun edibles, mood.com has delta9 THC freezer pops. So if you're looking to try some new cannabis products, head on over to mood.com.

Get 20% off your first order now with code weirdest. That's code weirdest for 20% off. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed. Pour your money back.

Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year. at lifelock.com slash Spotify. Terms apply. Okay, we're back. And I'm going to talk about the grass mud horse. People who speak Mandarin immediately knew what I was talking about. And here is where I will disclaim that I did study Mandarin in college,

and it has been nigh on a decade. And unfortunately, I loved Mandarin, and it was, I did not have, a knack for it and it was a language that required a lot of brute force memorization from me and I decided I was not going to commit my life to speaking it proficiently so I have basically lost all of my Mandarin skills so if you're listening to this and you speak Mandarin please look upon the words I pronounce the way you would a small child's because that's the level of proficiency I reached at my peak and it's been a long time. So I'm so sorry. Please pat me on the head and don't be mean to me. So in recent years, people have started talking about Algo speak, meaning that thing that

happens, especially on TikTok, but also platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Twitch, where people replace words with like seemingly very odd euphemisms or. homophones, to avoid getting caught by censorship algorithms. A very classic one is that people will often say unalived instead of killed, or even just unalive instead of dead, but I feel like unalived is inherently funnier. You know, people will, you know, and some of these are sort of like, oh, we're just getting around sort of like an oversensitive vulgarity filter. And some of them are like actually quite upsetting because, you know, if you're trying to, you know, post about like, for example, genocidal activity in the world and naming a particular country might get

something flagged. People say SA when they're talking about sexual assault because TikTok flags that as if people shouldn't be talking about their experiences. But it creates this really interesting, like language evolution where it's not just slang. It's this very like online platform specific, almost a code. And I actually, I was thinking about this today because I was almost doing a different story that was actually about like real cryptography. And I will do that eventually. but I was like, actually what I want to talk about today is this weird internet cryptography that we do.

And yeah, just like one of my favorites is L dollar sign bean, L dollar bean for lesbian. Again, things we should not have to change to get around sensors, but that is how TikTok works. And people have fun with it. And sometimes you're like trying to talk about like reproductive rights. This has happened to me. And you have to like use silly, fake words to talk about like sex and reproduction because otherwise TikTok will flag you. So it's like, you know, here is an incredibly serious historical medical fact.

And also I will be spelling sex, S-E-G-G-S. Thank you so much for your time. But whenever I see people talking about Algo speak, I always think this is not new. This has existed for like more than a decade on Webo, the Chinese social media app. And this is actually something that a friend of mine in college did their thesis on, which is where I first learned about it. But there's been a lot of really fascinating scholarship on it. Again, I will link to this on my Patreon and pops outcom slash weird. But I just want to talk a little bit about how this sort of coded language works on the internet for Chinese speakers.

Because I don't really have like a point to make other than like censorship sucks and people are innovative. But it delights me. So we're going to get into it. So the classic example of this goes back to the mysterious creature I mentioned called the grass mud horse. It is very commonly referenced, or at least was back in like 2012, all across the Chinese internet. According to this one researcher's blog post on it in 2012, a Google search had found more than 20 million web pages referencing the grass mud horse, which is impressive. because the animal does not exist. There is no such thing as a grass mud force.

I was waiting for you to tell me that it sounds like a horse, but it's actually like a fish or something. That was the surprise I was hoping for. Yeah. Or like, yeah. No, it just doesn't exist. It's actually a play on words, a very vulgar one. If you have a Mandarin-speaking toddler listening with you,

put hands over their ears. But the phrase for grass mud horse is sal ni ma. I'm so sorry, that combination of tones is my kryptonite. So that means grass mud horse. But with just a little shift of the tone, sao ni ma. That means motherfucker. And so because of the level of censorship on the Chinese internet, you know, It's funny. I think back in 2012, when scholars talked about this, it was always like, how wild that there's so much censorship on the internet on this Chinese social media. And it's like now it's actually much more similar, which I could go into a whole thing about. But we won't. That's not, we're not talking about the police state today. We are talking about how people use slang on the internet. But yeah, so this high level of censorship, so many words get screened. And, you know,

So, yeah, referring to the grass mud horse became a way for people to curse at each other without getting flagged. And it was just this like small subversion of the like authoritarian rules about how you use the internet. There are many other turns of phrase that are also like just sort of vulgarity. I won't read all of them because I don't want to warn Mandarin speakers that I've. about to say a bunch of unbeliefed curse words. But I will say what some of the English translations

are, let's see, we have Okay, so singing rice goose now just like a kind of a very rude sort of reference to a

an infection in your nethers. Yes. Yeah. Intelligent fragrant Chicken is a homophone for a phrase that's a slang for masturbation. I mean, shooting at an airplane. There's a hidden fiery crab translates to prostate glands, which doesn't really, prostate isn't a rude thing to say.

Also an infection of the nether. I was just going to say. Oh, there's also French Croatian squid is an almost perfect. transliteration of FU in English. And by the way, Mandarin transliterations are really fun. Like Disney character names will have like a string of characters put together so that the transliteration sounds sort of like Donald Duck, for example. So a lot of really ingenious character assemblages happen to create transliterations.

and this one is for telling people to go fuck themselves and the human mind. Incredible. But in addition to just kind of like being vulgar because like who is the government to tell you you can't say prostate gland on the internet, which I do agree with. I think we should treat each other with love and respect, but also it's your own business if you want to shout prostate gland on the internet in any context. or share ways to get rid of rice pudding infections. That's very important. Absolutely. Also, what if your prostate gland has cancer? Like, you want to be able to talk about it?

And see, that's a big problem both, you know, in the context of the sort of Webo censorship, but also increasingly outside of China on these international social media platforms, where people who want to talk about something that isn't really by any stretch of the imagination, something that the social media company would care about censoring because it has words that overlap with topics that they think of as dangerous. You know, we have to talk around them even though it's like for a very innocuous or like just like good, reasonable. I mean, listen, I don't, I think a lot of the things that are censored are good and reasonable to talk about. But even if you think, oh, that is a little spicy. There are other things that are not even related topics that now you can't talk about.

Okay, here's a great one. Because now we're getting into things people say using this like Algo speak that are more for actually talking about subversive stuff and not just being vulgar when the government doesn't want you to be vulgar. For example, and this one actually got banned because people were using it so much. People were saying, who mistake, the bank? because it has the word tank in it, which is banned. So instead they talked about the band, but now Huba Steg is banned on Wibo, or at least was, at one time. Prayers for Hube Stank. I guess they're the reason they got.

Oh, man. The reason is you, Huba Stank. The reason is you, Huba Stank. Another example of something that a word that was seemingly innocuous but then got banned because of its usage and now has been replaced by another thing that will probably eventually get banned. At one point, leaders who were laying down a lot of this censorship would invoke these goals of a Hesier-Sichler, which is Hermonious Society. again really really sorry doing my best it delights me which is why I'm trying maybe I shouldn't have tried so the word harmony uh hushier began uh people started using it like ironically slang for censorship because they were like oh I've been harmonized when their post was

censored um so that became such a widespread usage that they started to censor the word harmony too. So instead, people started talking about a new fictional animal, which was the river crab, because the word for river crab is he. So very similar, different tones. If you've been listening to all this and are like, what is happening, if this is your first time learning what a tonal language is, sorry, I should have said that at beginning, Mandarin has four tones. There's like, you can go like, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, Ma. Those are the four toes. Congratulations. And so yeah, different characters can have the same exact pronunciation but be different characters and they are different meanings. Characters can be put together to create compound words. And then there will be characters that have sort of to an English

speaker's eye the same pronunciation. You know, the opinion, which is the letters that make the phonetic translation, might be the same, but they have different tones. So the way they're actually pronounced. is quite different, you might, like me, just have trouble actually creating that difference in your mouth. So, yes. Yeah, Harmony, sort of a, it's not actually a homophone because the tones are different, but that's sort of a good way to think about it. Homophone with River Crab. So now River Crab means censorship. I really love just how much this says about, um, how creative people are when it comes to communicating with each other and how quickly things become like common parlance. Like I think that's the thing that really blows in my mind

about this is that people figured out and then like everybody's using it and everyone understands it. And of course, one of the ways that like censorship continues to hurt expression and organizing in this context is that some people won't get it. Some people will be out of the loop and they'll be like, why are people talking about river crabs? What's going on? I don't think that's an animal that exists even. And so it still Stainey's communication, but I think it's really cool to see all of the ways that this has evolved over the years. And actually, while I was looking at this today, I saw that in 2022, Weibo administrators posted saying like they were increasing their efforts to create a clear and bright cyberspace by capturing, catching and cutting out more of these

unique and innovative language choices. So, yeah, probably a lot of the things I've mentioned have either been banned by now or are, you know, in the process of getting cleaned up. But it's a last decade has taught us anything. It is that people will just come up with other, other ones. Long live the crazy of the, well, long live the internet. Everyone is just so creative. Yes. And they will get that, they will communicate, I think. Yes. Yeah. They will figure it out, especially when it comes down to like your, your ability to curse, your ability to share rude memes about government leaders who are making your life more difficult and probably you know hopefully other good cool community organizing stuff too um but yeah that's my that's my whole

story um i love all of these funny made up animals and some of them are actually like such burns They're a couple that are really like if you're not living in China, kind of inside baseball political burns that I'm like, I'm not even going to get into this because people are going to be like, whoa, that's so offensive. And I'm going to be like, in the context, it's a fair rib. And like any good fake thing, it sounds like it totally could be true. Like both of us were like, oh, yes, this is definitely going to be some sort of horse. River crabs. They live in the river. They live in the river.

Like, I could see, like, a fake study coming out about rivercraft just as a way to, like, as a way to do people. And people. That just speaks how strong that is. People have created a lot of fake lore about the fake animals as well. So people can definitely check that out if they, they are so inclined. But yeah. Is there a fake Zodiac calendar with them yet? Oh, I would buy that.

If we're in the, if we're, yeah, I mean, what a thought. Year of the river crab. Hey, hang. I'm sure I would be shocked if someone has not done that. But if not, somebody should. Is it grasshopper mud horse or grass mud horse? I've now forgotten. Grass mud horse.

Grass mud horse. Yeah, I mean, my sign is the grass mud horse. Ready for it. Yeah. This makes me think about how, you know, how Shakespeare came up with all of these words that didn't kind of exist before that. I feel like this is the genesis of the new Shakespearean Florid language right here. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and I think, you know, it's one of the reasons I love telling people about this is because in the context of like fighting Chinese censorship, most people will

be like, how ingenious, how clever. And when people talk about like teens on TikTok using I'll go speak. They're like, they're ruining the English language. And I'm like, hmm, it's just something to sit with, perhaps, for a moment. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and then have one more fact. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in a crowd. But too often, life gets busy or the price holds you back. Priceline is here to help you make it happen. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip.

Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visitpriceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. Okay, we're back. And yeah, Chrissy, tell me, I don't even, your tease was so mysterious. So you're going to have to just get into it. Much like the stars, I aim to mystify.

So, yeah, I teased with this sort of connection between the sacred and profane. And what I'm really talking about today is dung beetles. Oh, perfect. Yeah, exactly. Perfect marriage of the sacred and profane. Exactly. So they are not one species. They're in fact many.

The family of beetles that they belong to is the scarab family. Fun fact, if you see a scarab in Egyptian iconography, that is a dung beetle specifically. It is a beetle that ancient Egyptians observed rolling balls of poop around the desert. And then they decided that that was a great symbol for renewal and rebirth. I mean, I get it. I get it. Yeah. We need it.

Yeah. And I'll come back to that in a second. But basically, there are thousands of species of dung beetles in this family, 75 in North America alone. They're on every continent except Antarctica. Lots of habitats that they love. Deserts, forests, Savannah, anywhere there's poop. which is very relatable basically everywhere yeah yeah i mean Antarctica has poop but maybe not other hospital environmental conditions so yeah I was going to say it's like and it's like

less poop than other places in Antarctica yeah um so why dung beetles what's their deal uh you might already appreciate that a dead animal of any kind is kind of a whole ecosystem onto itself this podcast has also covered how a dead whale at the bottom of the ocean is like a city for a year or more after it sinks down. But in many ways, a whale fall is not unlike a pile of shit. So yeah, a pile of crap is a wonder unto itself. Beatles come to eat the dung, as we will discuss further. Flies come to lay their eggs.

Other insects come to eat the larvae of these animals. There are predators. It is a beautiful kind of stinky circle of life. So you may be asking yourselves, why eat poop? I think the better question here is why not eat poop? I've got a lot of good things going for it. Poop is really just the sort of undigested stuff that an animal left behind, stuff that your cow or your mouse couldn't use,

that there's still a lot of water in there. There's dead bacteria, which has all kinds of caloric value. You get some sugars, some fats. Dung beetles in particular tend to target the poop of herbivores and omnivores. and you get a lot of undigested grass in there as well as, again, water content. They like the nitrogen-rich stuff in there. And all of this is known as coprophagy, the eating of poop. Dung beetles do often eat other things too, but we are again here to talk about poop.

I know this podcast has never talked about poop before. Never. Not even more than 20 times. I didn't go and look at everyone. But yeah, so if you're a dung beetle and you want to eat some tasty poop, there are a couple strategies you might follow. You might be a dweller, which means you just live in poop. Poop is your home, home sweet poop.

You might be a digger. So you find a big dung patty and you tunnel under it and you bring some poop down into the basement with you to hang on to. And then there's kind of the platonic ideal of the dung beetle, the one you've probably seen sort of the most written about or cartoon characters to the like. And these are the rollers. These are the ones that find a fresh heap of dung. And they immediately get to work.

They grab some poop. They make it into a ball by rolling it around and manipulating it on the ground. They get on top of the ball and they do a little dance, which may be orienting themselves to the sky. More about that later. And then they get on the ground with their back legs still on the ball. They do not push it like you might, a shopping cart. They do it upside down the whole way, and they roll that sucker in a straight line away from the poop pile.

Sometimes as far as 200 meters away, these balls are often much bigger than them, 50 times bigger than them sometimes. The size of an apple is one example I have seen. I did watch quite a few videos of Beatles rolling poop in preparation for this segment. It's impressive. And I would say, like, if you're thinking of a vibe, it is a post-haste. one to bring that back. It is a like there's cheesecake in the break room, but you don't want to sit and talk to anyone while you eat your cheesecake. You want to go back to your desk and eat your cheesecake. Not that I'm an introvert. So why are they doing this? Like, why do you got to do

all this work just to get your poop snack? And in this case, well, there are a couple reasons. One, everyone else wants your poop ball. Sure, yeah. Yeah. Dung is actually a precious resource in a lot of ecosystems. Like you don't get like a nice big patapoo very often, relatively speaking. So it is kind of like a watering hole for organisms that eat poop or eat things that eat poop. So everyone in their mother is going to be heading for that pile the moment it is deposited on the floor of the world.

that would be the ground. And you want to get yours before someone wants to fight you for it. They're also predators, like I mentioned. There are people who want to eat you because you're at the watering hole, right? You want to get away from them. And if you're a dung beetle, this poop ball may also be your future. So you're trying to reproduce and it's generally safer to store your babies away from the crowds. Okay, so you have your precious poop ball.

You're a dung beetle. you also are maybe trying to attract a girl while you're at the poop watering hole. So males, if they're not just trying to eat, if they're trying to, in fact, start a family, they will still make a big poop ball, but then they show it off to a female. They've probably already encountered, you know, they've probably already met, you know, in a meat cute at the poop watering hole. But now he's got something to prove something to show for himself. He's showing her his poop ball.

And if she likes it, she thinks this is like a good place to get hitched. Then they roll off together into the sunset while he rolls the poop ball and she will either kind of like run behind or she might even hitch a ride on the poop ball while he's doing his little wheelbarrow thing. Yeah. So they have, you know, they're in their little like just married. poop ball car. And they get the ball a straight line away from the, from poop central. And they dig a tunnel together. They bury this poop ball in a safe little tunnel. And she will lay a single egg inside each poop ball. He may, sometimes in some species, there's like multiple poop balls involved. But one egg per ball. And then one or both of the parents stays while the eggs hatch. And,

the little grubs develop into full-grown or at least fully formed tiny beetles. This can take up to four months. It is a parenting marathon in the beetle world. Most do not stay that long. Most beetles actually tend to lay lots more eggs and invest less in them, but dung beetles are more along the lines of like three to 20 eggs per sort of family situation. There's a lot of investment here. Again, it's a very cute story.

It's not a poop house. It's a poop house. It's a poop home. Yeah. So that's like the Dung Beetle story. But then it's a matter of going back to how they know how to get in a straight line away from all the other problems. That's kind of the big mystery. Because if they don't go in a straight line, they might accidentally end up right back where they started, having wasted a lot of energy, having unnecessary. perhaps competed with other dung beetles, not a good use of their time or their precious calories,

which they have to then renew, of course, by eating crap. So how do they do it? Well, in the daytime, researchers have really figured out a lot of it. It's that they have the sun. The sun is there in the sky. The sun is an object. They can see it. They have little compound eyes like many insects.

and the photoreceptors in their eyes are capable of detecting, not just the sun, but probably the polarized light patterns around the sun. And this is especially useful for them when the sun is kind of low in the sky. So in the evening or in the morning, they love the sun. It also seems that midday, when the sun is right overhead and a lot less useful for determining direction, they switch strategies, as many animals often do, to sort of detecting wind. So if there's a strong wind, they can sort of use that as their navigation point. And again, when they are collecting their poop ball, one of the last things they do before they sort of set off helter-skelter in their direction is they do this little dance on top of the poop ball.

So they get on top of it. They do like a little rotation around and then they get back down and start pushing. So it is thought, again, that this dance is a way of figuring out what they're navigating by in the sky before they then. pick a direction. But what happens if it's nighttime? What do you do then? Some dung beetles are in fact nocturnal because that's a great time to find some poop and maybe avoid a lot of predators in the process. You know, you find your niche in time as well as in space. So nocturnal dung beetles back in 2003, it was discovered that they could do kind of like the same thing, the same trick as the sun, but using polarized moonlight.

You know, the moon's light hits the Earth's atmosphere. It does some scattering stuff. The light becomes polarized. Dung beetles can, in fact, detect this. Cool. What happens when the moon, which is not like the sun, is not the same every night. It is not in the sky overhead, perfectly ball-shaped every night.

The moon changes a lot. So what do they do when the moon isn't there for them? Or it's cloudy. And, you know, moonlight has less of a, you know, you can kind of tell where the sun is when it's overcast, but you can't necessarily tell where the moon is when it's overcast. So it turns out that at night, some researchers decided to investigate this. Thank God. Yeah, we needed researchers to understand this.

It was very important. So in 2013, they did some research because they wanted to know what happens when the moon's not visible for those beetles to understand straight lines. So what they did, they set up some little arenas in the bush in South Africa. And they did a variety of sort of different controls, as you might. But one of the controls involved putting little cardboard hats on some dung beetles so they couldn't see anything in the sky. And then, of course, giving them some poop and seeing what they did. they also took these Beatles to a planetarium in Johannesburg. And also, I think, brought poop into the planetarium.

Yeah. Little hat. Yeah. The planetarium? Man. Yeah. But they also had to bring poop into the planetarium. So I don't know how one, you know, arranges.

You know, I feel like it must be a whole diplomatic job to arrange field trips for Dung Beatles. Quite an email to send. I feel like if I were trying to do that, I would start with the Beatles and be like, look how cute these beetles are. Right. And oh, by the way, we need to bring some poop. Yeah. Like, that's how I would do that. So what they were trying to figure out, again, was could these beetles orient without the moon?

And if so, how? What were they looking at? What was their cue? Was it something on the ground? Was it something else? And the planetarium was important because it let them, you know, project different kinds of patterns sort of above. And the conclusion they came to was these Beatles are navigating by the Milky Way, which was just like us, just like us, just like some birds, just like some seals. Like they are using the light from this very bright, you know, band of stars that represents like the entire edge of our galaxy as we can see it, which again, sacred and profane.

I have a lot of feelings about this sensory ability just because. it is connecting, again, like poop to the heavens themselves and our bigger place in those heavens, right? You know, it's not just like some stars. It's like our galaxy. We're all laying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars and some of us are wheeling poop balls and looking at the stars. Yeah. Yeah. And so that was the research in 2013. It did kind of go viral. So this is probably not the first time people are here. hearing this fact toy, though I still managed to shock and awe friends at parties when I mentioned this. But more research has come out in the last few years that sort of looks at how this ability actually works. Are they seeing individual stars? Are they looking at something more vague, more generalized like the sort of changing brightness?

Because not every aspect of the Milky Way is the same brightness, right? There is a difference across the two sort of ends. Also, I should note the Milky Way is much more visible in the southern hemisphere just because of the way, you know, the Earth is oriented and the portions of the sky you can see. But those parts of the Milky Way may be more sort of hospitable to navigation. But so what this, what kind of the same research team did actually, it's been kind of the same people working on Dung Beetle navigation for the last 10 or 15 years. But no planetariums were involved this time as far as I can tell. but what they did was they kind of boiled down the pattern of the Milky Way into a brightness gradient that sort of represented where it was brightest, where it was darkest, and they started kind of again projecting versions of this pattern in a test arena for dung beetles

to see how they navigated. And I should note, too, like when a dung beetle is disoriented, they do these kind of spaghetti patterns on the ground and they may not end up right back at the center. of the circle sort of defined by the poop, but they do sort of, they don't go very far. They don't get very far away by the end of their journey, whereas well-oriented dung beetles will just, again, it's a straight line. They go as far as they can in a very efficient direction. Anyway, new research, individual star patterns, not helpful.

Nothing, you know, little weird spaghetti navigation patterns. they are lost. They are not living their best lives. They're probably competing with each other. It is not a good setup. But when they just did this sort of brightness gradient situation where they're like, here it's brighter, here's dimmer, blah, blah, blah. It also has different patterns night after night, depending on the orientation.

Sometimes it's kind of symmetrical in the sky where it's like bright at, you know, the ends, you know, if you're thinking a rainbow, that's actually the Milky Way, like the ends are bright, but the middle is dark. Do they still, like, navigate? And surprisingly, yeah, like, their little eyes can handle basically all you need as far as a difference between the brightest and dimmest parts for them to still be able to understand where they are is about a 13% difference in brightness. So that's not a very dramatic, like, I don't know if my eyes would necessarily, like, understand that percentage. It's impressive. It is a good use of a small brain and simple eyes. and I just find that really cool.

And I guess where I wanted to go with this is a bit of a conservation story at the end of the day. Because if you start to think, wow, these beetles, like, they need a thing in the sky that's kind of sensitive to maybe our light to a certain extent. Like maybe they might have problems if, you know, perhaps the sky gets brighter, which it in fact is, you know, like the dark sky. sorry, and this is Dark Sky International, estimating that skies have gotten like almost 10% brighter per year between 2011 and 2022, which is... Wow. Yeah, it's a pretty big difference.

And if you, the newest research on dung beetle sensing, you know, nocturnal dung beetles is that they are sensitive to light pollution. So if you brighten up a sky with this sort of... And it's in two different ways, which I find really interesting. So the one example of light pollution is you have like a big street light overhead. And it is one bright point in the sky on the ground. In that case, dung beetles do in fact, it's called a beaconing behavior and they go towards it. So they may all actually go in the same direction, still away from Poop Central, which was the name of my high school.

but like still away from Poop Central, but they're still close together, which is again a problem for the way they need space from each other in order to again live their best lives, reproduce successfully, continue the species, and even have like some of the ecological benefits that they have for other animals, which I'll touch on briefly before you make me stop talking. But the other behavior that they have is in response to what's called Skyglow, which is this more sort of diffuse. light pollution where you have like a city, all these point sources of light, and the sky is just sort of this like lit up like gray orange or, you know, some version of not dark. But it's uniform. And so there's no gradient for them to orient by. And so in this case, they act just like they might on a, you know, cloudy night with no milky way or moon. They go in little like drunk circles and don't successfully disperse. So both of these are kind of problems for them. And, and, you know, kind of again get back to this idea that we do really need to value the darkness of our skies,

not just because, you know, we find it poetic or, you know, sea turtles, for example, don't go the right direction when they hatch, but also because there are all these insects, and we don't know how all of them do what they need to do to live their lives yet, but at least one of them, the species of dung beetle, really needs a dark sky and to see the Milky Way on moonless nights. Do you want to know why I think we should care about dung beetle conservation? Yes. Great.

Yeah. So they're not just like funny beetles that live in and eat poop. They are also really important ecosystem engineers, which is this term for animals that really shape what's happening around them in important ways and can affect how whole food chains work. you would think that just leaving poop on the ground uneaten by a dung beetle would be better in some way, right? Maybe.

I get, I don't know. It's not. There are a lot of reasons for this. I don't know. Surprise. The poop shouldn't just sit there on the ground uneaten by beetles. They do really important work,

taking a lump of dung, which is important for ecosystems, but then moving it to places where it'll be more useful. So they don't just, you know, break it up into small pieces, but they actually bury it, right, where it can reach grass and other plant roots, where like the nitrogen and phosphorus actually stay underground as opposed to dissipating back into the air. Nitrogen fixation is like a key agricultural problem that, you know, farmers have tried to fix in different ways. Dung beetles can kind just do it for you. They aerate the soil. You know, water flow is better because dung beetles are

tunneling down in it. And one estimate looking at, for example, cow poop in Texas, in some parts of it, dung beetles are burying 80% of that. So imagine a world with, I don't know, five times as much poop as. Yeah, that seems like more poop than we want out in the world. It's a lot of poop. And you know who else likes poop that's just sitting there on the ground? It's flies. It's flies and flying insects, you know, proud purveyors of maggots, if you remember. But it's estimated that a single cow paddy can give rise, like can be a poop home for up to 3,000 flies in just two weeks. And this was a problem for Australia when Europeans first colonized there. They brought cows and sheep, but they didn't. bring any dung beetles with them. Australia already had dung beetles, but not the kind that were used to cow poop. Quala's, wallabies all have very different poop textures, and the native dung beetles were not particularly interested in cow patties. And so Australia soon became afflicted

with flies in a very, very, very bad way to the point where I think you can still, if you're buying like a cheap stereotyped Australia Australian person Halloween costume. One of the accessories you can get is a hat with a wide brim with corks hanging down on strings. But yeah, they invented these silly hats because there were so many flies until in the 1960s, the Australian government did in fact get their crap together and launch an effort to bring over the appropriate at dung beetles for cow poop. And so we have a story of messing up an ecosystem thanks to colonialism, but then also fixing it with poop beetles, which I think is just a beautiful story.

So that's dung beetles. And that's how the stars and our poop are connected. I love it. Fantastic. It also reminds me of a study came out recently about how moths aren't actually attracted to flame they're using it. They use light to orient. So it's like they're actually, they're getting caught in a circle because they're basically doing the backstroke thinking that the light is the sun or the moon, which is, um, makes me so bummed for them. Yeah. Especially because, you know, people have,

you know, for so long been like, ah, yeah, they just love those lights. And meanwhile, the bugs are like, what the heck is going on? I feel like we could do a whole like, psychotherapy with a moth skit where it's just like stop gaslighting me i don't love i don't love lamp i don't love lamp uh incredible kissy thank you so much for joining us this has been a lot of fun um we hope to have you on again sometime oh that would be super fun i promise i know things that aren't just about poop so i mean that's not necessary we would have you on for poor poop stuff. I just don't want to steal the poop light from, you know, other people who also like poop.

The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos.